Doctor Arrested for Using Fake Thumbs to Check Her Colleagues Into Work

Checking-in to work with old fashioned punchcard machines may be a thing of the past, replaced with more high-tech means of verifying an employee’s hours on the clock. Though, as technology has gotten more advanced, so too has workers’ schemes to get paid for doing nothing.

At a state run emergency care facility in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, outside of Sao Paulo, medical staff are required to log in and out of work using a fingerprint scanner — a foolproof-seeming system designed to streamline work verification and combat clerical errors. But after police were tipped to possible fraud taking place, the high-tech machine seemed suddenly much less secure.

Using a hidden camera, police recently captured footage of one of the facility’s doctors, Thauane Nunes Ferreira, behaving suspiciously in front of the scanner. Once detained, authorities discovered Ferreira was in possession of six silicone thumbs which she later admitted were molded after her colleagues’ fingers.

According to Ferreira, 11 other doctors and 20 nurses at the facility had devised a method to collect unearned wages by using the fake thumbs to trick the fingerprint scanner into believing they were on the clock.

The facility coordinator, Jorge Cury, denied having knowledge of the scheme, calling it “absurd”.

Numerous public officials, including Mayor Acir Fillo were quick to denounce the fraud, vowing to open an investigation across other public sectors. It is believed that falsely claimed earnings have fleeced the city of hundreds of thousands of dollars.